SuburbanDaddy

Over the last eight years, we have amassed a large amount of digital pictures and videos.  132 gigabytes to be exact.  And the number keeps growing.  What to do with all those memories?  How do I make sure they are never lost?

For a long time, I’ve been keeping them on the hard drive of our home computer.  I have an external hard drive where occasionally I copy everything.  But what if there is a fire or flood in the house?  Both would be lost.   I needed a better solution.

One low budget idea that came to mind was to keep the external drive at a friend’s house.  That way it would be safe from a disaster at my house, but it would be a pain to keep it in sync with the latest pictures and videos.   A better idea would be to store them in the “cloud”, using a backup service to copy files to a hosted computer that is secure.  But all the online backup services I looked at were expensive, costing hundreds of dollars a year to maintain.

Enter CrashPlan.   (Disclosure: I received a free one year subscription to CrashPlan+ to write this review, but what I put in the review is completely my own).  CrashPlan has the features I’d expect from a backup service.  Install a client to your desktop, select which folders you want to backup, and it runs continuously in the background keeping your files in sync with the backup location.  But here’s where it gets interesting.  The backup location can be 1) Another folder like an external hard drive, 2) Another computer anywhere like a friend’s house, or 3) Online at CrashPlan’s computers.  The first two options are completely free.  If you don’t have a trustworthy friend you can pay a few dollars a month for option 3.

Your backed up files are available online, to download whenever you need.  You can even restore the files as they existed at any point in time, which is handy if you mistakenly overwrite a file, or if tiny fingers on the keyboard manage to delete a file.  There is even a free iPhone or Android app to let you access files remotely.

If you have lots of digital pictures and videos, you need a backup plan.  I suggest you take a look at CrashPlan.

I knew Thing 3 reminded me of someone.

In preschool this week the topic is “Occupations”. Thing 3 learns about different jobs like librarian and police officer.  The teacher asked each child about their parents’ occupations.

Teacher: What is your mommy’s occupation?

Thing 3: She puts on a show.

Teacher: Oh, what kind of show?

Thing 3: A show for money.

Teacher: Really?! And who is the show for?

Thing 3: Daddy

He never ceases to amaze. Clearly Thing 3 has a very vivid imagination.

Thing 4 is into the typical girl stuff. Dolls, bracelets, and her favorite color pink. But she lives in a house with 3 older brothers who are into throwing, tackling, and football. What happens when these worlds collide?

If Friendly’s Ice Cream is looking for a model for an advertising campaign, could they ever come up with anyone cuter than this?

Hey Friendly’s, you owe us for this free advertising. If you want to see more pictures of your products with Thing 4, she only works for ice cream.

It’s probably an understatement to say Thing 3 does not like change. If his routine, food, clothes, and conversations were the same every day, he would be just fine.

Today he had a new teacher in swim class. Considering how long it took him to feel comfortable with the last one, it was no surprise he was less than cooperative.

The new teacher cheerfully said, “Hi! What’s your name?”

Thing 3’s reply: “My name is Stinkpot.”

I often think that Thing 3 is from another planet. He is truly an original as you have seen. Today he provided yet another clue.

We were watching Backyardigans, having nothing to do with space travel, when out of the blue he offered this:

Thing 3: I want to go on another planet. I don’t like our planet. I want to go to Mars. Mars is good.

Me: Why is Mars good?

Thing 3: Because Mars is the best planet. Because it’s so red. Because it’s a ball.

Where on Earth, or Mars, does he get this stuff?

We’re always looking for new activities. The more active the better. Today we found a new place called Rebounderz. Two giant trampoline arenas, video games. What more could you want?

First, they got instructions and the rules.

Then they got to jumping. For an hour non-stop. I have never seen them so sweaty.

After a while of practice, maybe they can be as good as this guy.

This is what Thing 3 looked like at the end.